You know why Michael Jordan is the best player to ever play the game? Because he made everybody around him better. He won with guys who, without him on the team, would be on the end of everybody’s bench. He won with guys like Luc Longley and Bill Cartwright and Steve Kerr and Scottie Pippen. Let’s see the guys playing now who they’re comparing to Michael win with those guys. Michael Jordan won with guys from the all-Y[MCA] team.

“I played with Charles Barkley [in Philadelphia] and Charles would beat you up if you went at him too hard in practice. Michael Jordan would beat you up if you didn’t. He demanded perfection. ... If you played golf with him he wanted to beat you. If you had a beer with him, he’d finish his beer first. Nobody will ever be that competitive. Nobody will ever be competitive enough to win 72 games in a season. Other guys take nights off. Michael Jordan played hard every single night.” JAYSON WILLIAMS - Nine-year NBA veteran

[3] The Best Defender In The Game:Michael Jordan is one of the best defenders in NBA history. You can glimpse his ferocious defense.

“We all know he changed the game of basketball. But him as a person, more and more as the years go on, you will start hearing people come out about what they think about him as a person, what he was able to do, what he did when he played the game of basketball. Most importantly now is how relevant he still is to myself, to guys in my age group, guys that are younger. Kids to this day never saw Michael Jordan play but they know who Michael Jordan is. His relevance right now, I’ve never seen anything like it.” CARMELO ANTHONY - Knicks leading scorer, Six-time NBA All-Star

“The funny thing was, and people have told me this before, is you’d announce the four starters before him and when you get to Michael Jordan, half the time people in the stadium didn’t hear me say ‘Michael Jordan.’ I could say ‘Mickey Mouse’ and they wouldn’t know. It was just so loud in Chicago Stadium and the United Center when Michael played.”

“[The intro with ‘From North Caaaaarolina’ was] the way that [previous PA announcer Tommy Edwards] introduced Michael. And when they brought me in to take [his] spot, things were scripted a certain way and they said we want you to do that. What I did was I kind of embellished it a little bit.” RAY CLAY - Bulls PA announcers from 1991-2003.

In Jordan's Defense: A video highlighting the "forgotten" part of Jordan's game.

“I remember the first time I saw him in the gym [at the 1981 McDonald’s All-America game], he just glowed. He had star written all over him.

“He scored 30 points and it was obvious he was the most talented athlete on the court. But they gave the MVP to someone else and that lit Michael’s fire. Even then was a competitor.’’

“We played them a couple of times in college, but it was the ‘92 Olympics that he had clearly established himself as the best player.

“The NBA was his. But Magic [Johnson] and Larry [Bird] were more established and Michael was very professional, very respectful of that. And he wanted to win gold. Whenever we hung around and talked, he kept saying, ‘We’re not going home without the gold.’” CHRIS MULLIN - Hall of Famer